1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to copying files in a computer system, and in particular, to a method, apparatus, and article of manufacture for an alternative copying mechanism using a transitive file copy.
2. Description of the Related Art
Often times, files or folders are copied from one location (i.e., a source location) to another location (i.e., a target location). Further, there are commonly multiple copies of the same file in multiple different locations both on the same computer and across multiple different computers and/or computer networks. However, when a file is requested from a particular location, the prior art commonly satisfies the request by copying the file from the particular location, even though the same file may be available in a closer location or a location available via higher bandwidth or faster transfer capabilities. Such problems may be better understood with a description of prior art file transfers and requests.
In normal day to day operation, some companies may post more than 15 GB of files to as many as eight (8) (or more) different server locations throughout the world. Of that 15 GB of files, about 25% of the content from these postings may be unique from one posting to the next. The remaining 75% is duplication from the previous posting. Accordingly, in such a company, roughly 11.25 GB of the same data is posted daily with the only difference being the destination folder that the files are being copied to.
The prior art fails to provide a mechanism that is “smart” enough to determine that the same file is already available in a different location on a machine locally. Instead, the prior art solves the problem by a user manually logging into a remote destination machine, making a copy of the existing files, and then selectively copying the files that are different. Such a prior art technique is a labor intensive operation that is error prone and requires user/human knowledge of which files are different and which ones are the same. When a network utilizes n remote locations, such a selective copying operation requires exponentially more effort by the user.
Prior art mechanisms may provide many expensive file copy/mirror programs but still fail to solve the fundamental problem of the same files being copied to different locations repeatedly. Further, prior art techniques fail to handle the issue of files that are the same other than their names (a simple rename operation) and files that are the same, but are going to a different folder on the same machine.
In view of the above, it can be seen that prior art techniques fail to take advantage of and utilize redundant file copies. Such a failure results in increased traffic on overburdened networks. In addition, the prior art techniques for file/folder transfers/posts are slow. What is needed is a technique that solves bandwidth/time issues for the transferring of large data files over a network.